In what is turning out to be a huge and ironic blow to the Defense Intelligence Agency’s continued support for using polygraphs (lie-detectors) machines to catch spies and intelligence leakers, a series of documents were leaked this weekend indicating that beating polygraphs can easily be accomplished using techniques outlined in several documents made available by AntiPolygraph.org

It may not come as a surprise to anyone, but the Defense Intelligence Agency’s polygraph screening program has never once caught a spy. In 2001, the DIA’s senior analyst for Cuban affairs, Ana Belen Montes, was arrested, charged, and ultimately convicted of spying for Cuba. She had in fact been acting as a Cuban agent from the very beginning of her DIA employment: she had been trained by Cuban intelligence how to fool the polygraph, and she succeeded in doing precisely that throughout her DIA career.

The documents leaked contain 18 example cases where “confirmed countermeasure” were being used by 17 examinees (one was polygraphed twice) since 2013. According to AntiPolygraph.org,

“Confirmed countermeasure cases are those in which the examinee has admitted to doing something in an attempt to manipulate the outcome. Federal agencies routinely forward such case files, stripped of the examinee’s identity, to the federal polygraph school, the National Center for Credibility Assessment (NCCA), at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, for study purposes.”

In addition,

“Countermeasure admissions, when they occur, typically result from an accusation by the examiner followed by interrogation in an attempt to elicit an admission. Countermeasure admissions are rare and are a feather in the cap for polygraph examiners, who are typically rated based on the admission rates they obtain. By examining the polygraph charts from these representative cases, we can infer what activity by an examinee is likely to arouse the examiner’s suspicions, leading to an accusation of countermeasure use (and ultimately, perhaps, an admission).”

Below is a list of all the countermeasure files provided to the public by antipolygraph.org. This information has been closely held by the polygraph community and has not previously been published in any public forum. These documents reveal that while polygraph operators publicly claim that countermeasures are ineffective and that they can easily detect them, they are less sanguine when behind closed doors speaking amongst themselves. AntiPolygraph.org features prominently in their discussions.

Virgil Vaduva is a Libertarian security professional, journalist, photographer and overall liberty freak. He spent most of his life in Communist Romania and participated in the 1989 street protests which led to the collapse of the Ceausescu regime. He can be reached at vvaduva at truthvoice.com.